Abdirizak Bihi testifies during a hearing before the House Homeland Security Committee March 10, 2011. (Reuters)

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“In the 1990s, after Black Hawk Down in ’93, you had a lot of people trying to get out of there,” Clemente said. “The rule was that we were offering immigration to people who were not from the major clans, people who were being persecuted. All the major clans did was name a smaller clan.”

CAIR representatives and their allies in Congress, like Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison, have denied the threat that al-Shabaab poses to American national security, said Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy.

“Dawud Walid from CAIR’s Michigan chapter is on record repeatedly telling American Muslim youth for example that ‘9 out of 10 times the person trying to influence you over the Internet is not even real. … It’s someone with the government trying to set you up,'” Jasser told TheDC. “He even casts doubt on whether Al-Shabaab is a terrorist organization.”

Jasser praised Bihi’s work, saying Bihi “called out Imams and Islamic centers which glorified the al-Shabaab and the jihad in Somalia. In exchange for that tough love to Minnesota Muslims, groups like CAIR labeled him and his colleague in Minnesota Omar Jamal as ‘anti-Muslim.'”

Bihi’s own congressman (and CAIR fundraiser) Keith Ellison “did nothing to expose the radicalization of Muslims,” Jasser said. At Bihi’s House testimony in 2011, Jasser said, Ellison “smeared [Bihi”] and said he “was ‘only invited to testify because [Bihi’s] willing to diss the Somali and Muslim community in Minneapolis.'”

Analysts like David Reaboi, Vice President of the Center for Security Policy, doubt that CAIR is “necessarily” pro-al-Shabaab. “Their mission is to destroy any allegation of ‘radicalization’ in Islam,” says Reaboi. “They want everyone to be in fear of talking about it.”